1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for functional biomechanical analysis. The analysis assesses the biomechanical relationships of the spine and adjacent regions in a dynamic state based on a patient's chief complaint and clinical presentation. The analysis calculates a value of function or impact for a particular spinal region.
2. Brief Description
Many health care professionals must work around the constraints of being “second guessed” relative to an insurance reimbursement for patient care. The fact remains that the longer the treatment the more expensive the care and the more expensive the case for both insurer and patient. Managed care made its mark a long time ago by exposing healthcare “professionals” who prolonged their treatments for financial incentive. Sadly, this still happens today.
For most other segments of the healthcare industry, managed care has obligated the healthcare professionals to respond to being second guesses by creating standards of care guidelines, capturing statistical treatment data and generating metrics and measures designed to show their commitment to delivering quality patient care in a cost effective and clinically efficacious manner. Yet, few standardized measures are available for Chiropractors and many other medical professionals dealing with pain management to support their treatment plans approaches and visit number requests.
Arguing for chiropractic or physical therapy visit extensions with insurers means being prepared to defend clinical inquiries about patient care and necessity. And, as often happens, gaining an approval for a complete treatment plan may well depend more upon the chiropractor's savvy in knowing the patient's plan rather than a sound clinical skill set. This is one reason cash plans are so often sold to patients: The patient and his healthcare provider do not have to deal with the constraints of second guessing treatment plans.
If evidence-based, multi-disciplinary clinical communications data on musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) were quickly available, easily read and understood by all involved in patient care, then it could enhance chiropractor, insurer and patient communication.
All MSD conditions emanate and escalate from some type of physical trauma to a body region or body part—whether the trauma is caused by a sudden event or cumulatively generated. Adding the understanding that our musculoskeletal system functions with a high degree of bio-mechanical interrelation, it follows that an inherent physical weakness in a particular body region will increase the chances of an MSD developing in the body parts and joints of the afflicted body region.
Similarly, weakness in a particular body part or joint can often cause another stronger, but related body part to become overworked by compensating for the weakness. For example, repetitious overwork is one the most major risk factor for all MSD's. This type of reasoning could be used to support reimbursable office visits and approve complete treatment plans.
Stated succinctly; identifying inherent weaknesses in a specific body region will greatly increase the potential to identify a specific MSD concern for the body parts of that region and all bio-mechanically related areas. If this type of information could easily be shown it would allow Chiropractors to identify body regions and body parts that could well become injured because of their “compensating” for an inherent weakness elsewhere in the body.
An example would be an inherent weakness identified in a woman's left hip as the possible root cause of a problem in her knee, foot or ankle—on either side of her body. A complete treatment plan would ensure the hip flexors are strengthened to the point of releasing any dependence on any related biomechanical pathways; not just treating the pain in the left hip. Yet, without clear and excellent documentation using a standardized approach, the risk of being second guessed to only treat the pain is very likely to happen.
Merely knowing that related physical stress factors can cause an MSD, the ability to effectively document and present these findings in a manner that can be easily grasped by any “second guessers”. An evidence based program that uses multi-discipline research to offer a significant pathway toward gaining clinical necessary and credibility between all parties involved.
Musculoskeletal Disorder Reporting (MSDR) is one such evidence based, multi-disciplinary approach. It is a program that analyzes a person's physical functionality using a large body of evidence-based, multi-disciplinary research sources from which clinical pathways relating to musculoskeletal conditions have been extracted and correlated. The program quantifies a persons' functionality by body region within a particular diagnosis and analyzes relationships between the joints and spine, systemic and sensory issues, BMI, and, biomechanical factors.
The MSDR approach is especially sensitive to non-acute or sub-clinical injuries such as—backs, necks, shoulders, wrists, and legs, which are the highest grouping of all occupational injuries. As these asymptomatic injuries are not at all immediately apparent and build over time with increasingly immobilizing pain along, establishing a musculoskeletal baseline exam (that is performed consistently every time) allows one to abate a potential future injury by creating awareness on their weakest area and knowing their exacerbating factors. This can avoid a multitude of costly exposures and future injury.
Output reports are by individual body region and on a total body basis. Supporting research for MSDR is preferably exclusively peer-reviewed research findings from a large library of clinical references.
MSDR was founded on analyzing history and physical correlative medical pathways for the purpose of detecting injuries before they occur. MSDR was architected to detect risk factors associated with musculo-skeletal condition in an individual with or without pain.
The MedAppraise MSDR® (MSDR®) exam is one such MSDR that provides an assessment of a patient's musculoskeletal system toward establishing a standardized musculoskeletal baseline that can be an effective “360 degree” communications tool for the chiropractic physician with insurers, case managers and patients. MSDR® is a predictive risk assessment tool for the Musculoskeletal system. The key advantage in applying an MSDR® score lies in its ability to standardize testing for musculoskeletal disorders without concern for inter-examiner reliability issues which is the fundamental basis for “second guessing” any care delivery plan. MSDR® is a predictive risk assessment tool for the Musculoskeletal system
The low cost of implementation for MSDR® compared to other methods can generate a strong return-on-investment for chiropractic providers of post-analysis intervention programs for supporting and documenting treatment plans programs and their associated visit frequency.
MSDR® has been designed against “Gold Standard Tests” and “Reference Standard Findings” of a physician's exam. While highly accurate in its findings, MSDR® is not intended, nor should it be used in place of a chiropractic physician's exam.
MSDR® serves as a treatment guidance tool that can follow the injury trend of an individual regarding a specific MSD condition so a specific intervention (preventative or reactive) can be considered and applied prior to that condition growing more serious. As such, MSDr® serves as a preferred musculoskeletal baseline analysis.
This invention relates to a system and method suitable for assessing and communicating musculoskeletal disorder risks to a wide range of medical and human resource professionals.